Dems more willing to take on their own over sexual harassment

Two Democratic lawmakers accused of sexual misconduct were pushed out of Congress this week, while Republican Trent Franks announced his resignation Thursday night after being advised to step down by House Speaker Paul Ryan. However, Republicans have yet to apply similar pressure in two of their most prominent cases of alleged misconduct: Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore and President Trump.

The bottom line: There's a clear difference in how each party is handling sexual misconduct. Republicans — especially if Roy Moore becomes a U.S. senator — will have to decide whether to impose the same standards on members of their own party. And of course, there's the irony Franken mentioned in his farewell speech — the Republican president was caught on tape boasting about sexual assault.

Democrats accused:

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.): Stepped down from Congress Tuesday after being called to resign by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Rep. James Clyburn, among others.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.):Announced he will resign from the Senate on Thursday after more than 30 Democratic senators called for his resignation.

Rep. Ruben Kihuen (D-Nev.): Pelosi and other leading Democrats in the House have called for Kihuen to resign, but he told ABC News earlier this week that he won't.

Republicans accused:

Senate candidate Roy Moore (R-Ala.): Senior Republicans initially called on him to step aside, though many softened their stances over time. Trump eventually gave Moore his full endorsement, and the RNC reinstated their financial support this week. (Sen. Cory Gardner, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told the Weekly Standard today that the group will “never" endorse Moore.)

President Trump: No Republicans recently have called for him to resign over allegations of sexual misconduct, although Sen. Jeff Flake and Sen. Bob Corker have been far more critical of the president recently. After the Access Hollywood tape was released toward the end of the 2016 campaign, some condemned Trump's words, but few Republicans withdrew support for his campaign.

What they're saying:

RNC vs. DNC:On the same day, the DNC called for Franken to resign and the RNC reinitiated their financial support for Moore's campaign.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.): "I think it's not a good time for the U.S. Senate," he told Axios' Caitlin Owens. "Every time I turn around there's some new information. This is very different from last week and next week will be very different ... I don't think Roy Moore should be a member of the U.S. Senate, I've said that from the beginning."

Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.): "We have a president who acknowledged on tape that he assaulted women. I would hope that he pays attention to what's going on and think about resigning."

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska): "When you say there's different consequences in the two partes, I don't know that I concur," Murkowski told Owens, noting that Moore has not been elected yet, but refusing to speculate about what would be done if he was. "I don't think it is a party issue," she said. "I think that you when you have had a series of accusations that impacted a member's ability to represent their state it demands that action be taken," referring to Al Franken.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said that it is "entirely in the hands of Republicans at this point to decide whether or not they are going to take this issue seriously." He praised Flake for denouncing Moore. On Trump, Durbin said the president's reaction to the many allegations against him has been “irresponsible ... He has a responsibility to address these issues more forthrightly and not to ignore them."

A spokesman for Ryan pointed to The Office of Congressional Ethics, saying the independent group "investigated this claim and voted unanimously to dismiss the complaint against the member. ... We clearly need to reform this entire system and process, and that is the purpose of the House Committee on Administration hearing this week." Ryan also reiterated his position that Moore should bow out of the race to reporters on Thursday.

Self-driving lab head urges freeze after "nightmare" fatality

Uber self-driving car in Pittsburgh. Photo: Jeff Swensen / Getty

Carmakers and technology companies should freeze their race to field autonomous vehicles because "clearly the technology is not where it needs to be," said Raj Rajkumar, head of Carnegie Mellon University's leading self-driving laboratory.

What he said: Speaking a few hours after a self-driven vehicle ran over and killed a pedestrian in Arizona, Rajkumar said, "This isn't like a bug with your phone. People can get killed. Companies need to take a deep breath. The technology is not there yet. We need to keep people in the loop."

Why it matters: Virtually every major car company on theplanet, in addition to numerous startups and tech companies, are doing live testing of self-driving vehicles — and pushing policy officials to allow them to do so.

But Rajkumar said that ordinary people in addition to automakers and tech companies have developed far too much trust in self-driving technology simply because the cars have driven hundreds of thousands of miles with only one fatality before this — a Tesla driver who slammed into the side of a truck last year.

Quote "This is the nightmare all of us working in this domain always worried about."

Report: Cambridge Analytica says it could use sex, bribes to "entrap politicians"

A 4-month undercover investigation conducted by the UK's Channel 4 News revealed that Cambridge Analytica has secretly campaigned in more than 200 elections around the world, using shady tactics that include bribery and prostitution in order to entrap politicians in compromising situations. The company says they "entirely refute" the allegations.

Why it matters: Cambridge Analytica worked for Donald Trump's campaign during the 2016 presidential elections, and is at the center of a controversy for its role in harvesting data from more than 50 million Facebook profiles. Facebook announced Monday that it has hired a digital forensics firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of the company.

A Channel 4 reporter, posing as a fixer for a client working on elections in Sri Lanka, secretly filmed Cambridge Analytica's chief executive Alexander Nix as he described some of the tactics the firm employs:

“We’ll offer a large amount of money to the candidate, to finance his campaign in exchange for land for instance, we’ll have the whole thing recorded, we’ll blank out the face of our guy and we post it on the Internet.”

Nix also said they could “send some girls around to the candidate’s house,” adding that Ukrainian girls “are very beautiful, I find that works very well.”

“…Many of our clients don’t want to be seen to be working with a foreign company… so often we set up, if we are working then we can set up fake IDs and websites, we can be students doing research projects attached to a university, we can be tourists, there’s so many options we can look at. I have lots of experience in this.”

Another CA executive, Mark Turnbull, discussed how the firm pushes damaging material onto social media: “… we just put information into the bloodstream of the internet, and then, and then watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again… like a remote control. It has to happen without anyone thinking, ‘that’s propaganda’, because the moment you think ‘that’s propaganda’, the next question is, ‘who’s put that out?’”

Statement from Cambridge Analytica to Channel 4:

“We entirely refute any allegation that Cambridge Analytica or any of its affiliates use entrapment, bribes, or so-called “honey-traps” for any purpose whatsoever… We routinely undertake conversations with prospective clients to try to tease out any unethical or illegal intentions…”

What's next: Part three of Channel 4's documentary on Cambridge Analytica will air tomorrow at 3pm ET, and will reportedly focus on the firm's work in the U.S.